Families endured an agonizing wait for news of their loved ones Friday as Swiss investigators rushed to identify victims of a ski resort fire at a New Year’s celebration that killed at least 40 people.

Authorities began moving bodies from the burned-out bar in the luxury ski resort town Crans-Montana late Friday morning, with the first silver-colored hearse rolling into the funeral centre in nearby Sion.

Around 115 people were also injured in the fire, many of them in critical condition.

As the scope of the tragedy — one of Switzerland’s worst — began to sink in, Crans-Montana appeared enveloped in a stunned silence.

“The atmosphere is heavy,” Dejan Bajic, a 56-year-old tourist from Geneva who has been coming to the resort since 1974, told AFP.

“It’s like a small village; everyone knows someone who knows someone who’s been affected,” he said.

The blaze began at Le Constellation, a bar popular with young tourists, at around 1:30 am Thursday.

Bystanders described scenes of panic and chaos as people tried to break the windows to escape and others, covered in burns, poured into the street.

Edmond Cocquyt, a Belgian tourist, told AFP he had seen “bodies lying here … covered with a white sheet,” and “young people, totally burned, who were still alive… Screaming in pain.”

The exact death toll was still being established.

And it could rise, with canton president Mathias Reynard telling the regional newspaper Walliser Bote that at least 80 of the 115 injured were in critical condition.

Swiss........

© The Times of Israel